The Artist’s Way Week 1 Part 2: Up and running with the morning pages, plus a date with an artist

A clever salesperson covers all eventualities. Lo and behold I learn that ‘hating the morning pages is a very good sign. Loving them is a good sign too’. I read about the Censor, my inner critic (we are well acquainted) who will be put in his place if I fill my three pages each day. I can’t see this happening, but I’ll go with it. The Censor is prominent in early efforts, but as the week progresses he moves into the shadows. The pages slowly become something other than expressions of failure and unworthiness. It’s impossible to know if this would have happened without Covid-19, but anxiety about my work has been replaced with bigger concerns. On day three or four – who counts these days? – I notice how hard I press my Parker to the paper, which is curling up at the sides, but I don’t pay much attention to what I’m writing. Sometimes I repeat the same phrase three or four times and once over three lines. I assume this will do nothing other than get me to the end quicker, but something else is happening: in wading through the detritus I find a rhythm.

I’m as enthusiastic about running as I am about reading (more of this later) and writing. Aside from family and friends, these are the things I love most about my life. As a rule, I’m not comfortable in my skin and I feel out of step with the world. But when I find a rhythm, whether while running or writing, I gain comfort and confidence (it’s probably adrenaline and endorphins) and this is what happens with the morning pages. By the fifth day I am waking early and keen to sit down at my desk. If I have an idea of what I’m going to write I try to destroy it, an act of self-discipline I had not anticipated. I am taking so much pleasure from the physical act of writing with a pen, and the fact that I am allowed to write whatever comes to mind is liberating. My Censor points out that this should be neither easy nor enjoyable, but that’s not up for debate. On day six I write two poems and both are good enough to share with readers and writers. My average is one poem per year. What’s going on?

By now I have trained myself to maintain my hypnagogic state through getting out of bed and making coffee and I open my notebook with a sleepy lucidity. I ask and answer questions, raising and solving concerns that would have festered all day. New ideas find their way onto the pages and I work through them alongside old ones which have been waiting like washing on a line. I take them down, sort through them and emerge optimistic that I have something to say after all. I don’t even dwell on the fact that I’m not ready to write prose in anger; it’s enough to know that ‘it’ is there, waiting for me when I’m primed. It’s time for the second pivotal tool.

The artist date sounds like fun. More than that, it’s what I need. The old me would have written it off as a distraction technique, but I am being told – I’ve signed up, remember: I’m in – that it’s okay to pamper and indulge my artist. I should get a t-shirt printed: Bin the Censor and Love the Artist. It feels strange to allow oneself luxuries when one is neither producing nor earning, but after the success (time will tell whether I have rushed to judgement) of the morning pages I’m intrigued. What I haven’t mentioned so far is that I have stopped reading fiction. Having devoured a tower of books in January and February I stopped completely about ten days ago and I don’t know where I left the book I abandoned. Reading was my consolation when the writing was drying up because all reading is research and it’s the next best thing to writing. And that’s the reason I haven’t brought it up. Not reading as well as not writing is instant disqualification, don’t you think? Not if you have the artist date to fall back on. I must now commit to a minimum two hour session per week when I take my artist out to play. We’re constrained by the lockdown, but we could choose to view galleries online, take a walk down a country lane, or try some new music. I could even let my artist help me sort out the mess in the garage. I’m not sure Julia would approve of that one. We decide to view Loveless, a Russian film that is propping up my watchlist.

Read the next instalment here.